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The best mobile application testing tools for QA pros

As a professional QA tester or QA manager, you need to stay up to date on the best mobile application testing tools to help you deliver amazing customer experiences while also optimizing the way you work.

Not only are you dealing with continuous deployment, but also device types, connectivity, and mobile settings are all part of the customers’ environment and can seriously affect mobile performance.

These tools can help you improve your test coverage and test cycle speed so that you can deliver results to engineers faster. 

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Use cases for mobile app testing tools 

Most of the tools showcased below have multiple use cases. Oftentimes, testing tools aren’t so much tools but rather platforms with robust feature sets. It’s important to note what’s already in your tech stack, what’s missing, and what can be improved upon.

  • Manual test case management
  • Issue tracking
  • Device emulators
  • Automated testing (running and re-using scripts)

Because there tends to be some overlap in those use cases, we’ve split up our list of recommendations into two types of mobile application testing tools: those made for manual testing and those designed for automated testing.

Manual mobile application testing tools

Testlio

Testlio provides the industry's most comprehensive test management platform
  • Testlio’s public API, integrations, and partnerships enable CI/CD builds, DevOp workflows, project management, automation testing, monitoring, and more.
  • Quickly access insights on testers, time, devices, locations, actions, results, trends, recommendations, and more are available at your fingertips.
  • Real-time traceability into everything that happens, including issues, tests, devices, and the source of root changes.

TestRail

Testrail is a popular tool for manual test case creation and management

As one of the most popular tools for manual test case creation and management, TestRail is an important part of a QA tech stack. 

Some of the best features include:

  • Rich test cases with test type, priority, pre-conditions, time estimates, and more
  • Ability to allocate testing resources to different cases and plan a test run
  • Real-time reports and metrics on current test runs to evaluate manual testing progress (really important since otherwise manual testing can lack visibility)

BrowserStack

With BrowserStack, you can test your mobile app on different device emulators and simulators to find more complex issues than just responsiveness and screen size concerns.

The top features include:

  • Works for all major Android and iOS devices
  • Helps development teams build apps that are stable across different devices
  • Includes both emulators and simulators for virtual device testing
  • Can serve as a starting point for manual testing (keep in mind that physical mobile app testing is still important to maintain quality, and that virtual alone isn’t enough)

Kobiton

Mobile app testing tools Kobiton enables manual testing on real devices in the cloud

Kobitron enables manual testing on real devices in the cloud.

Here are the top features:

  • From your desktop, lets you test natural mobile gestures including tap, swipe, and scroll
  • Captures detailed logs with videos, screenshots, gestures performed, and environment stats like memory and battery 
  • Makes it easy to replay issues and replicate bugs

GitHub

Mobile app testing tool Github is widely used by testers

Well, you can’t argue with those stats. Where would manual testing be without GitHub? The majority of manual testers have logged issues into GitHub at some point in their careers, and for good reason. The platform is still widely used by developers. 

For testers, here are the top features:

  • Track issues in the same platform that developers use to track debugging and new development
  • Robust issue tracking with prioritization, application area, and more
  • Issues can be assigned as tasks, turning the issue tracking into a project management function

TestFairy

Mobile app testing tool Testfairy allows to keep track of user-discovered issues and send them over to your bug tracking tool

As a QA manager, you might be in charge of not only managing testing to discover new bugs but also acting as a gatekeeper for the bugs passed on from customers to engineers. With TestFairy, you can keep track of user-discovered issues and send them over to your bug tracking tool.

  • Collects real session recordings of user bugs, crashes, and errors
  • Collects feedback from beta testers
  • Helps with tracking and prioritizing user-discovered issues
  • Includes native integrations with Trello, JIRA, GitHub and other popular bug tracking tools

Automated mobile application testing tools

HeadSpin

Mobile app testing tool Headspin allows to conduct performance and load testing

HeadSpin has been steadily gaining in popularity as a go-to for automated mobile testing because it includes not only functionality testing capabilities but also performance and load testing. 

Top features include:

  • Coverage of any device and device-environment combination, including not only Android and iOS mobile devices but also wearables
  • Supports automated testing on all major frameworks (Appium, Selenium, XCTest, and Espresso, etc.)
  • Helps you set and track quality assurance KPIs

Bitbar

Mobile app testing platform Bitbar allows testing on real mobile devices from web browser

Bitbar is a mobile app testing platform that lets you test on real mobile devices from your web browser.

Here are some of the top features:

  • Helps you scale device testing
  • Works for all major Android and iOS devices
  • Combines OS versions, screen resolutions, CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage capacity so you can test hundreds of combinations
  • Automated mobile testing works with any framework (Appium, Calabash, Ranorex, Espresso, Robot Framework, etc.)

TestComplete

Mobile app testing platform TestComple includes a variety of testing solutions all inside one platform

TestComplete is a popular automated mobile testing tool because of its variety of testing solutions all inside one platform.

Top features are:

  • Includes real devices and device emulators
  • Helps you run automated tests on both Android and iOS with one set of code
  • Lets you record mobile gestures such as swipe, pinch, drag, drop, or scroll on one device and then utilize them across multiple devices
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